


33. fated to die

by piggy09



Series: The Sestre Daily Drabble Project [61]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-30
Updated: 2016-08-30
Packaged: 2018-08-11 23:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 994
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7910983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helena woke up on the floor of the warehouse and couldn’t feel her legs. Or anything. She put her hand to her chest and couldn’t feel the beating of her heart. After holding her breath for one minute, two, she realized she didn’t need to breathe.</p><p>She thought: alright, then. And then she thought <i>alright</i> again harder so that she could make it true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	33. fated to die

**Author's Note:**

> [warnings: vomit, possible dissociation?, death]

i.

“I shot you,” Sarah says. “You were dead. You were _dead_.”

“Yes you did,” Helena says carefully, talking around her bullet wound. “It’s a miracle.”

ii.

She woke up on the floor of the warehouse and couldn’t feel her legs. Or anything. She put her hand to her chest and couldn’t feel the beating of her heart. After holding her breath for one minute, two, she realized she didn’t need to breathe.

She knew this wasn’t heaven. She hadn’t been good enough for heaven, and she knew hell would be this red but figured it would be hotter. Mostly everything seemed numb, cold. So. Not hell. Not heaven.

God must still need her for something. So. She got back up; she watched the rest of her body’s blood pump out through the hole in her chest, sluggish and slow. She thought: alright, then. And then she thought _alright_ again harder so that she could make it true.

iii.

“You came back,” Sarah says, as they’re walking out of the apartment. Helena’s left toes are gone; she can’t feel them, she can’t move them. They’re just dead (ha) lumps on her foot. She walks with a slight limp, but that doesn’t seem like something Sarah will notice.

“Yes,” Helena says.

“For you,” Helena says.

Sarah just looks at her. Helena wants to tell her everything, but not while she still has things left to lose.

iv.

On the drive to Rachel’s apartment building Helena has to pull over to the side of the road while her stomach and throat heave all the food back up, everything she ate in Arthur’s apartment, uck-uck-uck. It’s not stomach-mush. It’s still whole, bite-sized pieces. That makes sense. There’s no spit in her mouth, so there can’t be anything in her stomach, so there’s nothing to break the food down. So there it is: on the ground, still half-eaten. A sardine watches her with its single eye. Helena watches it back.

“No,” she says to it. “Not yet.” She can’t feel her entire left leg. She gets back on the motorbike anyways.

v.

 _Pull, Art, see who’s faster_. Because why not. Because how long does she have, anyways.

vi.

Helena and Sarah in the car to Cold River. Helena heaving her feet up on the dashboard and not being able to get them back down, because she can’t move them anymore. That bullet in her chest, one single bright star.

 _Sarah_ , she thinks, _I’m scared of leaving you_.

She doesn’t say anything. She turns the radio up. She can’t feel her legs.

“Sarah,” she says, two hours on the road, “thank you for bringing me. I’ve never had this much fun before.”

“Well,” Sarah says, sounding uncomfortable, “it’s not a fun trip, yeah? We have to find Cold River, and Swan Man.”

“I know,” Helena says. “But I’m having fun anyways.”

vii.

She doesn’t sleep, all night in the tent. She lies awake.

 _Sarah,_ she thinks, _I’m scared of_

viii.

She kisses Jesse but it doesn’t taste like anything much. Her tongue is a heavy weight in her mouth. She hates this bar: all the drinks she’s scared to drink, all the food she cannot eat. This boy, kissing her like he’s kissing a living girl. The absence of Sarah. The clock in Helena’s spine is ticking down, and Jesse feels like wasting time.

She stops kissing him.

“Am I gonna see you again?” Jesse says.

Helena says: “I’m dying.”

“Oh,” Jesse says. “Does it hurt?” And what else can Helena do but kiss him again, for being kind.

ix.

 _Does it hurt?_ Sarah asks.

 _No_ , Helena tells her. _I don’t feel anything anymore. Not my legs, not my hips, not the scar where you stabbed me in the side. Soon I won’t be able to move my arms. Sarah—_

 _Sarah_ , she thinks, _I’m scared_

x.

She leaves the bar, but Sarah is already gone. She has to walk home. Each step drags; her feet are lead pillars tied to her body with shoestrings and duct tape. Her torso is nothing but a bullet wound. She knows she came back for _something_ , but what if that something already happened? What’s left?

Just a long walk. Just a long, long, walk back home.

xi.

She goes to Arthur’s apartment. She whispers to the fish: _I’m dying_.

The fish don’t say anything back. And Helena loves them, for being kind.

xii.

“You came back,” Sarah says, and it sounds like a question.

Helena’s mouth is filled with rot and Helena’s arms and legs are too heavy to move. She nods.

xiii.

Sarah and her sisters dance, and Helena pulls her body up and down and up and down again. Her eyes burn and itch – she’s crying, she thinks, or she’s trying to. But she lost all the tears already. They’re all gone. They seem like a story she heard about, once, but one she heard a long long time ago.

Sarah dances with her. Sarah laughs. Helena wants to laugh back, but that would mean opening her mouth. She can’t move anything below her neck, not in the way she’s used to; it’s like a dream, where you run as fast as you can but you only go nowhere.

Sarah grins at her, big and bright as a star.

 _Sarah_ , Helena thinks, _I’m_

xiv.

She collapses behind the easels. Everything would smell like rot, if Helena could still smell. She wishes Sarah would come back here. She wishes Sarah would hold her hand. Even if Helena couldn’t feel it, it would be nice to know that Sarah was there. She’s scared. She is so, so scared.

Cosima murmurs to Sarah about honeybees and galaxies and nature. Everything makes sense. Everything has a pattern.

Helena’s eyes slip closed. The dark doesn’t burst with shapes and colors. It’s just the dark. Not like a womb, not like coming home, not like an ending. Just the dark.

“Sarah,” Helena says, but no one answers.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please kudos + comment if you enjoyed! :)


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